


Catching Lightning

by wwa archive (wisdom_walks_alone)



Series: Lanie Jackson and the Olympians (Percy has a Twin AU) [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Twins, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-31
Updated: 2016-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:20:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24573712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdom_walks_alone/pseuds/wwa%20archive
Summary: Percy and Lanie Jackson have never had it easy, and life's about to get a whole lot harder.
Relationships: Percy Jackson & Grover Underwood, Percy Jackson & Original Female Character(s)
Series: Lanie Jackson and the Olympians (Percy has a Twin AU) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1776172





	1. My Math Teacher Gets Killed by a Pen

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this when i was 12-13 and it was one of the first fanfiction projects i started. it's not very good and it's not even finished, so. sorry.

I'm just going to say this outright. My life sucks.

That's not even an exaggeration. I didn't ask for the life of a half-blood. Let me tell you this: If you think you're like me, stop reading immediately, burn this book, and  _ forget you even saw it _ . Enjoy ignorance while you still can. Don't question anything your mom or dad told you about your missing parent. And at all costs,  _ do not _ , I repeat,  _ do not _ let yourself begin to believe your reality. It only gets worse from there. 

If you're just a kid who thinks this is a fantasy fiction book, I can't say I don't envy you. Honestly, I wish I had what you had. It probably doesn't involve you fighting for your life with a pointy object. If it does, I'm not one to judge.

But seriously, if you think you might be one of us, be careful. Ignore any weird things, or people, or creatures that only you appear to be able to see. Just let yourself think it's all a hallucination and dismiss it. Once you find out the truth,  _ they _ will come for you. Don't even think about who  _ they _ is, just dismiss that too. Dwelling on it will only shorten your normal childhood.

Don't come crying to me if a one-eyed man shows up at your door.

The name’s Jackson. Lanie Jackson.

If I could choose any part of my twelve short years to start with, I'd probably go with last May, when everything in my world changed forever. When my brother and I got kicked out of Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids.

And my twin brother, Percy, and I are  _ definitely _ troubled kids.

Our sixth grade class was on yet another boring field trip. Percy and I did not have good experiences with these. In fact, field trips were usually the reason we got expelled from every single school we ever went to. 

For example, last year in fifth grade, we may have accidentally fired a revolutionary war cannon while at the Saratoga battlefield. I swear it was just that: an accident. But unfortunately, it had been aimed directly at the spot where our school bus was parked. We didn't even know it was loaded! But of course, we were asked not to return the next year. 

And the year before that in fourth grade, we were rough-housing on the catwalk of the shark tank at Marine World, where our class was having a behind the scenes tour. Well, long story short, I shoved Percy who ended up knocking into a lever and our entire class, the teacher, the aid, and the tour guide took an unexpected swim. 

Again, a total accident. Okay, maybe it wouldn't have happened if we hadn't been playing around, but that's beside the point. Honestly, they couldn't blame us for not knowing the lever dropped the platform, dumping everyone on it into the tank. But of course, we were expelled for that, too.

I could go on and on about all our mishaps eventually ending in disaster and expulsion, but I won't, beach use that would take way too long.

On this trip, we were going to try our best to not get in trouble. And hopefully not destroy anything. Boy, were we mistaken to have ever believed this would end well.

But on the upside of this field trip, Mr. Brunner was one of the chaperones. He was a pretty cool guy. At first glance you wouldn't think of him as a cool teacher, but he was. He always told stories and jokes and let everyone play games in class. He also had a bunch of old Roman armor and weapons that we were allowed to play around with occasionally. He was the only interesting teacher at Yancy, so I was thinking,  _ Hey, maybe this field trip won't be so bad. _

Again, big mistake.

I sat on a bus filled to the brim with rich, snobby, crazy, kleptomaniac twelve year olds on the way to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at all the old Greek and Roman stuff. I was seated in the seat across the aisle from Percy and our friend Grover. I had to remember to not bring anything that would be worth stealing, not that any of my belongings were. My partner was chatting to her friend in the seat in front of us, but I didn't care. It's not like we were friends or anything. 

Nancy Bobofit, one of those rich and snobby kleptomaniacs, was lobbing chunks of her lunch consisting of a peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich at Grover, getting peanut butter smeared in his curly brown hair the entire way into the city. If you ask me, or any other person with tastebuds, peanut butter and ketchup were  _ not _ to be put together in one sandwich. But that apparently didn't matter to Nancy.

I felt bad for Grover. He was always being picked on, most likely because of how easy it was to do so. He was a scrawny kid who cried whenever he was frustrated, and he must have been held back a grade or two, considering no other sixth grader had acne yet. He also, on top of everything else he had to deal with, had some muscular disease in his legs. The good thing that came from that was that the kid had a note excusing him from gym for like, forever. I would give anything to not have to run laps or do pushups every other day for forty-five minutes straight. But, despite him walking like an old man without a cane, he could run faster than anyone on enchilada day. And I mean  _ anyone _ .

So, Nancy Bobofit was throwing pieces of her sandwich at the back of Grover’s head, and she knew Percy could do nothing about it because he and I, naturally, were on probation. After awhile, I had given up on trying to stand up to her. Whenever I tried, I just took the fall.  _ Oh, poor Nancy, _ they would say,  _ just look what the psychotic girl who can't go a year without getting expelled did to you!  _ I could clearly remember the headmaster threatening the two of us with in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or remotely entertaining happened today.

“I'm going to kill her,” Percy muttered. I face palmed and he glared at me. He hadn't even seen me do it, but he knew I did. It’s kind of like twin telepathy, but no other twins we've met have it. Not that we've actually met too many twins. Or that telepathy actually exists.

“It's okay, I like peanut butter,” Grover assured him as he dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.

“That's it.” Percy started getting up but Grover pulled him back down.

“Don't do anything stupid,” I scolded him. “We're already on probation. Knowing our luck, _you'll_ get blamed if anything happens,” I jabbed a finger at him, “and _I'll_ go down with you.” I then proceeded to point to myself.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled rolling his eyes. “I know.”

Looking back on it now, I wish one of us had just punched the stupid redheaded, freckle faced, bully right in the face. It would've saved Percy and I a lot of trouble if we had just gotten in-school suspension.

We arrived at the museum, and Mr. Brunner was leading the tour in his motorized wheelchair.

He was guiding the group through huge galleries that made even the slightest sound echo. We passed marble statues and about a thousand glass cases filled with about a million black and orange pieces of pottery. It was kinda boring, to say the least, but it amazed me at how long this stuff had survived.

The group crowded around a stone column that was maybe thirteen feet tall and had a sphinx at the top. Mr. Brunner told us it was a grave marker, or  _ stele _ , for a girl who was about our age. He explained about the carvings on the sides, and it was kind of interesting. Percy kept shushing everyone who was talking, but no one seemed to listen. The fact that the other chaperone, the pre-algebra teacher named Mrs. Dodds, was glaring at him probably didn't help him out too much. You could smell that stink eye from miles away.

I could have sworn that woman was truly evil. She was a small southern woman from Georgia, and always wore this black leather jacket. It was really weird since she was, like, fifty years old, if not older. She had come to Yancy about halfway through the school-year, because our first math teacher had a nervous breakdown or something like that.

Since her first day she  _ adored _ Nancy Bobofit and thought of the Jacksons as the twin demons from hell. Whenever she pointed her wrinkled finger at one of us and said, “Now, honey,” real nicely, you could tell it was because we would be getting a month’s worth of after-school detention.

For chewing gum in class she once made me write the words  _ I will not chew gum in class _ over and over again until the whole chalkboard was covered. Then I had to  _ clean _ the entire board. That took me past midnight to do, and my hand had a serious cramp the next day. On top of that, I was also extremely tired from lack of sleep. 

Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the sight of a naked guy on the stele to her little snob group. They were so immature. Meanwhile, I was actually trying to pay attention, and their giggling was making that a hard thing to do.

“Will you  _ shut up _ ?” I heard Percy hiss from next to me. Everyone’s head snapped in his direction. They then started cracking up and Mr. Brunner stopped telling his story. I guessed he hadn't meant for it to come out that loud, and I gave him a face saying  _ Haha, you got embarrassed. _ He glared at me but turned back around when Mr. Brunner cleared his throat.

“Mr. Jackson,” he started and gestured to one of the statues. “Did you have a comment?”

Percy's face turned bright red, and it was so funny, I, being the good sister that I am, just had to laugh. “No, sir,” he said and glared daggers at me.

Mr. Brunner then pointed to a picture on the stele. “Perhap you can tell us what this picture here represents?”

Percy visibly relaxed. “That’s Kronos eating his kids, right?” he asked.

I couldn't help myself. I  _ had _ to make some sort of sarcastic remark after that. How could I not have? “ _ No, _ Percy,” I said, “it's some random dude eating whole cabbages with faces.”

Mr. Brunner frowned and everybody started laughing again. It was Percy's turn to laugh at my red face, and he did just that. 

“Mr. Jackson is correct,” Mr. Brunner said interrupting the laughing students. “And Miss Jackson, would you care to tell us why he did this?”

“Well, Kronos was the king of the…” I scrunched up my nose in thought for a moment. “Titans? And, um, he, uh, he didn't want to be overthrown as a prophecy said he would be, so he ate his kids to prevent that from happening. But his wife gave him a rock to eat instead of baby Zeus, who she hid. And when Zeus was all grown-up, he tricked Kronos into throwing up his siblings-”

A chorus of “Ews,” and “Yucks,” were heard from behind me.

“-and then there was a war between the gods and the Titans, and the gods ended up winning,” I finished.

A few snickers came from the crowd of students.

“Like we're going to use this in real life,” Nancy Bobofit whispered to one of her friends. “Like it's going to say on our job applications, ‘Please explain why Kronos ate his kids’.”

“And why, Mr. and Miss Jackson,” Mr. Brunner said. “To paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?”

“Busted,” Grover muttered under his breath.

“Shut up,” Nancy hissed, blushing furiously. And I thought her hair was red.

At least it wasn't just me or Percy this time. Mr. Brunner was the only teacher who ever caught her saying anything bad, which always made me happy.

I shrugged after thinking about the question for a minute. “Dunno, sir.”

“Me neither,” Percy said and shrugged also.

“Mmm, I see,” our teacher said looking somewhat disappointed. “Half-credit, you two. This is the Titan lord eating his children, and Zeus did indeed feed him a mixture of mustard and wine, which caused him to disgorge his other five children, who, being immortal gods and such, had been living and growing undigested in their father's stomach. The gods defeated the Titan lord, sliced him into pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in the darkest part of the Underworld, Tartarus. On that happy note, it's lunchtime. Mrs. Dodds, would you please lead us back outside?”

Everyone scattered themselves, the girls gossiping and complaining about how hungry they felt, and the boys pushing and shoving each other around like the idiots they were.

The Golden Trio, as I had started calling us, was about to follow suit when I heard Mr. Brunner say, “Mr. and Miss Jackson.”

Darn. I knew we were getting off too easy.

Percy told Grover to keep going then turned around to face Mr. Brunner. “Yes, sir?”

The Latin teacher looked at us with a gaze that you just couldn't look away from. His brown eyes looked as if they were thousands of years old and had seen everything there was to see in the world.

“You two must learn the answer to my question,” he told us.

“About the Titans?” Percy asked.

“No, the one we didn't know the answer to, dumdum,” I corrected before looking to Mr. Brunner for confirmation.

He nodded. “What you learn from me is vitally important,” he said. “I expect you both to treat it as such. I will not accept anything but the best from you, Percy and Lanie Jackson.”

I nodded. I could tell Percy wanted to be angry at him. I kind of did, too. In truth, he did push us really hard. 

I admit, it was cool that he was kind of teacher who would dress up in a suit of Roman armor and shout: “What, ho!” challenging us, sword-point against chalk, to run up to the board and name every Greek and Roman person there ever was, plus their mother and what religious group they were in. But Mr. Brunner expected us to be as good as everyone else, even though we have dyslexia. On top of that, we have attention deficit disorder, or ADHD, and neither of us had ever gotten more than a C. Well, there was that one time I got a B+, and ended up rubbing it in Percy's face the rest of that week, but nevermind that. Despite all of this, he still expected us to be as good, no,  _ better _ than everyone else.

We both muttered something along the lines of “I'll try harder next time,” and Mr. Brunner looked at the stele one last time, a sad look in his eye as if he'd gone to the girl's funeral.

Percy and I went outside to eat our lunch.

Our class gathered on the steps leading up to the museum, where we could watch the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Fifth Avenue.

A storm was brewing in the distance, with the blackest clouds I'd ever seen hanging over the city. Seriously, those things were  _ black _ . Like they were about to flood New York with ink.


	2. the math teacher actually dies (and other ideas i didn't get to)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these are just little snippets i had written but didn't get to implement into the main story

My eyes widened. What I saw was  _ not _ something I expected to see in a museum. Percy was staring right at an ugly creature with black bat wings and glowing red eyes. It looked weirdly like...Mrs. Dodds. Her talons were sharp, and were out as if to attack my brother. I wanted to call out, run to help him, do  _ something _ . But my feet didn't seem to get the message. They were glued to the floor, and my mouth refused to make a single sound. Just then, Mr. Brunner rolled into the room in his electric wheelchair. 

“What ho, Percy!” he shouted while throwing a ballpoint pen into the air. Mrs. Dodds lunged, and Percy dodged with a yelp. He plucked the pen from the air, but once his hand closed around it, it grew into a bronze sword.  _ Mr. Brunner’s _ bronze sword. The one he used on tournament days in Latin class.

“Die, honey!” Mrs. Dodds hissed before lunging at Percy. He swung the sword, and our pre-algebra teacher exploded into yellow dust. Mr. Brunner was gone. I ran to my brother.

“Percy!” I exclaimed when I got to him. The sword was gone, and in its place was a simple ballpoint pen.

“Tell me I'm not going insane,” he said, his eyes wide with fear, worry, and shock. His breathing was faster than normal.

“No,” I said. “You're not. Either that, or we both are.” He shook his head.

“Very reassuring, Lanie,” he said. “Very reassuring.”

We walked out of the museum in stunned silence.

* * *

I gave up on studying for that stupid Latin final. How the heck am I supposed to know all those myths and gods and titans and giants? What even is the difference anyway? I decided to go see Percy in his dorm to see how he was doing. Presumably no better than me.

When I opened the door the first thing I saw was an unidentified object flying towards me. Before I could figure out what exactly was going on, I ducked and the object sailed over my head. I looked at what almost hit me, and it was a Latin textbook.

“What the heck?” I yelled. “You almost beheaded me with a  _ book _ !”

“Sorry Lanes,” Percy said sheepishly, “I didn't see you there.”

“I take it you're trying to study?” 

“Yep.”

“I see. How's that working out for you?” I picked up his textbook off the floor.

“Not good.”

“Never would have guessed.” I threw his book back to him and it nearly hit him square in the shoulder, but he dodged it and the book landed behind him.

“You could have just dislocated my arm!”

“At least wasn't it close to hitting your head.”

“Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry. But what are you doing here?”

“I came to see how you were doing. I gave up on studying.” I shrugged.

“Yeah, same,” he said, and I rolled my eyes.

“ _ No, _ ” I said, sarcasm dripping from my voice. “I never would have thought.”

He did the most mature thing a twelve year old boy could do: he stuck out his tongue. I, being the more mature one in our twinship, did the same.

* * *

We stood back to back, weapons drawn. The Ares kids closed in. My heart raced. Percy gulped.

_ Goodbye, world, _ he thought.

“We'll be fine,” I hissed, but I wasn't so sure, and he could tell. Most dangerous capture the flag game ever. The Ares kids charged.

* * *

Falling from the St. Louis Arch was not exactly at the top of my bucket list. It actually wasn't even on the list at all. I couldn't even think about how I had the worst luck let alone how to save myself and Percy over the screaming panic roaring in my ears.

I'm pretty sure it was panic, anyway. It could've also been my screaming.

Percy didn't scream at all as we fell. He didn't even flail. But something told me that he was scared senseless, even though I couldn't see his expression through his mop of blowing hair.

We were falling for no more than a few seconds, and the river just got closer and closer. I braced myself for impact, and the last thing I remembered was hitting the surface and water filling my lungs.

I took in a long, sharp breath, immediately coughing out water into my hand. The water burned my throat, but I had to keep coughing. My lungs felt wet, soaked, drenched in an unfamiliar substance. I kept coughing.

It took me a minute or two to stop coughing, and I realized Percy, Annabeth, and Grover were looking down at me, concern written on their faces.

“What happened?” I croaked, my throat still sore from the water. “We were falling…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah percy and lanie had some kind of botched twin telepathy going on. it was a demigod twin thing. and no, percy and lanie do not have the same power set. she is not meant to be a carbon copy of percy.


End file.
